The present invention relates generally to imaging systems, such as systems used to present images digitally that are acquired through various different techniques. In particular, the invention relates to the presentation of images from different media, such as film-based images for presentation and comparison to one another and to images acquired through digital media.
Image acquisition and comparison are fundamental processes in many areas. In the medical diagnostics field, for example, anatomical images have been produced through many different techniques and modalities. Very conventional modalities include X-ray imaging systems which traditionally produced film that could be easily reproduced and displayed in very high quality reproductions for reading by a clinician or radiologist. Increasingly, however, such fields have moved towards digital imaging. Digital imaging provides significant advantages, including the ease of storage and transmission of images for display and analysis. Such images can also be manipulated in very effective and efficient manners, such as to display images side-by-side or in sequences that make their understanding and analysis much more effective.
Problems have arisen, however, in the comparison of images resulting from different types of systems. For example, conventional film-based systems, such as X-ray systems, will continue to be used in many settings due to their simplicity and robustness, and due to the fact that they are well understood and well established. However, integrating images produced on such systems with digital systems has been a challenge. Traditionally, the films are scanned to produce digital data, and the digital data is stored for transmission and display. However, the only displays that have been available for such scanned film have been so-called “sheet modes” on various types of workstations. For example, picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) can display such images in sheet mode, with the display effectively resembling the sheet of film from which the data originated. Powerful tools of the PACS workstations, however, are unavailable or useless on such images due to the relatively rigid nature of the image data file. By comparison, radiologists can read digitally-acquired images, as from CT and MR studies in stack mode, wherein different images, such as images acquired at different points in time, can be displayed together. The comparison of such digitally-acquired images with sheet mode displays of scanned film-based images is quite inefficient and difficult, and results in time-consuming consideration of one or the other of the image sets.
An improved technique is needed for enhancing the efficiency and facility of reading images from different originating media, particularly images from film and images from digital acquisition systems. There is a particular need at present for a system which can facilitate the integration of both film-based and digitally-acquired images in the medical diagnostics field.